


Thawing Pains

by PipGraham



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Hypothermia, Literal Capsicle, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Protective Tony Stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:54:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21798664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PipGraham/pseuds/PipGraham
Summary: Tony never expected his father's annual Arctic expedition to actually turn up Captain America's body, and yet it is his to deal with now.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 12
Kudos: 189





	Thawing Pains

Tony had completely forgotten about the annual Arctic Expedition his father had put into place in the 1940s. He knew _of_ it, sure, but he hadn’t given it any thought since he’d left Obadiah to put his parents’ affairs into order after their death.

He knew in a roundabout way that Stark Industries was still funding them, it came up in the annual budget review. By now it was tied to multiple international research projects. Scholars from universities around the world were catching a ride into the icy hellscape, and in turn SI was credited in the acknowledgement sections of countless peer reviewed articles. It was a win-win.

No one actually expected to find Captain America.

When he received the call about it, Tony thought it was a prank.

Three hours later, he was standing in front of a block of ice, approximately 8x4x4 feet, with rough edges that were only just starting to melt off and become clear enough to let Tony see the frozen remains of the world’s first and only supersoldier. Only the heaters in his suit or armor kept him warm. A block of ice this size radiated an incredible cold into the room.

All around him, scientists bustled and argued in thick winter coats, trying to figure out how to thaw the remains out while doing the least amount of damage possible. Some were of the opinion that it’d be better to keep him frozen like this until they could get the remains to a better-equipped facility.

Erskine had no living relatives, and so it fell to the heir of the serum’s co-creator or the people who discovered the remains to decide what happened to the body. Tony was both of those entities, so the ultimate decision of what happened to the remains of Steven Grant Rogers fell to him.

“Do we have a morgue on this ship?” Tony asked. He was assured they did. It was a tough decision to make. Right now, he was doing his best to control all outgoing communications. As soon as anyone leaked that this body had been found, the military and any and all alphabet agencies would be trying to claim it, or to get a piece of it.

The hunt for the serum had led to countless horrible experiments over the last 70 years and Tony didn’t want them to pick back up again. The risk of failure, of seeing more terrible outcomes like the Abomination or even the Hulk roam the earth because of military agendas was not something Tony wanted to allow on his watch.

And yet the serum had endless potential in healthcare, Tony could only imagine what this stuff could do. The things it had healed Steve Rogers’ broken body from were mind-blowing. How could Tony withhold this from the world?

Most of all though, how could he trust anyone on this ship with these remains. These were only partly his people. If the corpse was thawed out, how could Tony keep it safe? He realized that he’d have to be the one escorting it back to civilization.

“Get the heaters set up. Keep him upright like this so we can have them in a circle around him. Make sure the drains are free and the heaters can’t fall into he puddles.” He decided. “We’ll thaw him out gently from all sides and lay him down when most of the ice is gone. Then we’ll bring him home in the morgue fridge.” Tony tried to tell himself that it was the best possible thing to do. Rationally, he knew it wasn’t. He knew there was a risk the serum might deteriorate in a dead body, but at the same time he couldn’t bring himself to leave the man frozen in ice any longer. He’d been lost for so long. He deserved to be found.

And so, Tony sent everyone away to continue their own research while he waited. He stood and watched as the water dripped off the block of ice. Dark thoughts clouded his mind as he couldn’t stop his own resentment from bubbling up again. This was the man he’d been measured up against all his childhood. And for what? What kind of a father compared a child to a grown man?

Tony was the grown man out of the two of them now. He had to look it up online, Steve Rogers was only 27 years old when he’d died. That was nothing. At that point, Steve Rogers had carried the mantle of Captain America for three years. In no way had he deserved to have all this weight resting on his shoulders.

As the night dragged on and on, Tony pulled up a chair that creaked under the weight of his armor and watched the shape in the ice become clearer. More and more water ran down the drain, leaving salty streaks on the floor.

So far three separate scientists had attempted to email funding bodies and the military, but JARVIS had blocked the outgoing transmissions. Tony really needed a plan.

He wished he knew Bruce Banner in person. If anyone knew about this serum it was him. All Tony had to go by were his publications, and they really weren’t speculative enough to give Tony a step-by-step manual on what to do if Rogers’ body was ever found. So, Tony waited. He decided to take a blood sample from one of the major arteries, and tissue samples. His suit was capable of taking small core samples. Granted, the device was not designed for human flesh, but it would work in principle. And then… well, then it was a matter of preserving the body until wiser decisions could be made. He just had to make sure none of it fell into the hands of anyone with a deeper agenda. This was going to be a nightmare.

“Always causing me trouble, aren’t you, Rogers?” He said, using the armor’s glove to scrape some of the melting ice off Roger’s front. The ice had weakened so much by now that massive chunks fell off at once, uncovering parts of the body in one fell swoop. Tony had to rush to catch Rogers’ body before it could go down with the chunks of ice. “Jeez Cap, going to give me a heart attack.” Even with the armor it wasn’t easy to lift the man, his legs still partly encased in ice as none of the heaters were aiming at them directly. Tony lifted Rogers, ice and all, onto the morgue slab that had been removed and brought up in preparation of transporting the Captain to the freezer there.

Tony had seen corpses before, too many for comfort. It was strange, seeing Rogers. He looked just like his pictures. He’d been flash frozen to death, so his features hadn’t had time to slacken. He looked like he might wake up any second. Tony found himself being very gentle with him, laying him out carefully. He stroked the man’s hair back; a small patch of his hair and the skin underneath had ripped out when the ice block it had been frozen in had fallen off too soon.

Tony’s stomach dropped and it took a few moments for his mind to catch up with his body’s instinct of dread. There was blood oozing from the wound the torn skin had created on his scalp. Slow and sluggish.

Was that normal? Did frozen corpses bleed when thawed? Tony didn’t know what to do. A part of him wanted to call for backup, to find some scientist or doctor on this ship who knew more about anatomy than Tony did. At the same time, he didn’t even want to imagine what people might say about him if he did this. If he implied to anyone that this body might not be dead, and he was wrong people would call him insane. Even worse, if he was right… who knew what would happen to Steve Rogers.

The military’s attempt to capture a failed supersoldier serum experiment at Culver University was legendary. What lengths would they go to in order to try and claim the real deal.

“God please don’t be alive…” It was an unkind thing to think, but Tony wasn’t sure he was ready for all the implications a living Captain America from the 1940s would have.

Tony wondered for a moment, if maybe today was the day he would go insane. Madness had always seemed within reach.

He stood and waited, watching the blood drip slow and steady into Rogers blonde hair.

Half an hour of watchful waiting and Tony was convinced he was either right or insane. He saw small muscle spasms start up in Rogers’ face and then his body, as if long-forgotten muscles were starting to get pulled back to life.

“Oh fuck…” Tony said softly, standing up and getting closer. There, in Rogers’ temple was the slightest of twitches mirrored in his cheek. Then the trembling started, and Tony realized some ancient self-warming mechanism was being triggered, even though the man was firmly unconscious. Tony brought the heaters closer, uncertain of what else he could do. The rest of the ice cracked, and Tony pulled and tore it off the legs of Rogers’ uniform until the man lay trembling on the slab he didn’t belong on.

“Rogers. I don’t know if you can hear me, but this is the spookiest thing I’ve ever seen, just so you know.” Tony said quietly. There was nothing he could do for the man, he could only watch and wait, still unsure what would happen if Rogers woke up. Decades in the ice could have done untold damage to his brain. He could wake up severely mentally disabled. He could be dazed, violent. There was no telling what Tony was going to face when the trembling stopped.

Nothing could have prepared him for the desperate low whimper that followed after another half hour of thawing. Tony suddenly remembered how painful it was to warm up ice cold hands after a long time outside in winter. This had to be the same sensation, except amplified by magnitudes. Rogers had to be in agony.

“Hey, it’s alright, Cap, it’s okay. You’re fine, you’re safe. It’ll stop hurting soon.” Or at least Tony hoped it would. This man was alive. He was really properly alive. This wasn’t some ghost of a response.

In a moment of madness, Tony retracted the armor’s glove, putting his arm hand on Rogers’ forehead, feeling him cold but not frozen. Worse, there was the slightest twitch, an increase in pressure, as if Rogers was seeking out the warmth of his hand.

“Fuck...” Tony still couldn’t believe it. “It’s going to be alright. You’ll see.” He said, detaching the chest plate from his armor and laying it over Rogers’ torso. It didn’t fit there well but it did so well enough to lay flat. Tony could see the exact moment when the armor’s heating plate registered with Rogers. Something settled and Tony realized his face had gotten almost animated, there was agony written on it, but that expression relaxed ever so slightly with the added heat the chest plate provided. Maybe it brought him comfort.

Tony wondered if he’d been aware of being alone in the cold on some level. He wondered what that would do to a person. He rested his hand on the man’s forehead, smoothing out the lines with his thumb. “You’re okay, just take it easy.” Tony kept assuring him.

“This is a bit of a reach, but if you can hear me at all, make some sort of sound, will you?”

A sound did come, but there was no telling if it had been in response to Tony’s request or if it would have come out anyway. It was a primal pained noise.

“I know it hurts.” Tony continued. “You were all frozen for a really long time, but not to worry, you’re thawing fast. And whatever you need, we’ll get it for you. You’re going to be alright. We owe you that much.” He assured the man.

With some difficulty, Tony detached the front and back plating for his thighs from the main skeleton of his suit, sliding them over and under Rogers’ thighs to help warm him up. The lower legs were easier. Soon he’d half-covered Rogers in the heating elements of his suit, helping to speed up his thawing process.

It was a while until Rogers body stilled. “Oh god, please don’t be dead.” Tony said quietly, feeling the man’s neck for a pulse.

As he was bent over him, Roger’s eyes opened. They were glassy and unfocused but sought out Tony in a dazed way, pupils very wide in the somewhat bright room.

Tony could only smile in relief. “Hey there handsome. I was just about to try the Princess and the Frog method.” He joked, before he realized that Captain America came from a very different time and was most likely a homophobic asshole by today’s standards.

He looked at Tony and tried to form a response, lips quivering as his muscles tried to comply. “S- Slee-ing eu-I.” It was gibberish, except…

Tony laughed. “You’re right. Sleeping Beauty is much more fitting.” He said. “Good you’ve still got a brain, I’m glad.” He said. “Why don’t you stay down and get properly warm. You’ll need… god you’ll need all kinds of medical care, but you’re going to be alright, I’ll make sure of it.” He promised. Rogers’ eyes crinkled a little and Tony wasn’t sure if he was going for a smile or if the real weight of the situation was sinking in.

“It’s all good, you’ll see. The war’s over. You’re coming home with me.” Tony promised.


End file.
